Medical equipment company doubles as art gallery

June 8, 2005 - "Ventana Medical Systems" doesn't seem like a
name for an art gallery. Even if tissue samples are beautiful when
magnified, as scientists there claim, they hardly qualify as public
art.

But walk up to the entrance of the company's national
headquarters, in Oro Valley, and you might feel like you've reached
a gallery by mistake. The architecture is eccentric, featuring
geometrical forms in purple and beige, and an attention-catching
rust-colored sculpture towers over the parking lot.

And inside, about 100 works of framed art grace the walls.

The unlikely public art display is possible because of a
relationship the medical laboratory equipment supplier has with the
Greater Oro Valley Arts Council. One provides the walls; the other
provides something to hang on them.

"We're able to help them by displaying art, and they're able to
provide us with some beautiful artwork that gives us a better
environment to work in," said Gregg Forszt, the facilities
coordinator at Ventana Medical Systems, who coordinates the display
of the artwork.

On any given week, about 25 people visit the company
headquarters just to see the gallery art, Forszt said. Two rotating
exhibits, one organized by the arts council and one from the
Tucson-based Etherton Collection, display art ranging in price from
$75 to $4,000.

The Sun City Artists Association's work will fill the arts
council's wall space through June 30. Many have local themes,
including a painting of San Xavier Mission at sunset and one of
sunlight streaming down the Catalina Mountains, titled "Oro Valley
Gold."

That arts council's exhibit, which changes four times a year,
will feature work from the Drawing Studio on Fourth Avenue
next.

"We work with GOVAC, and they select the arts groups that are
going to be exhibited here," Forszt said. "We rely on their
expertise to make it look more like a gallery than a manufacturing
facility."

The wall space reserved for the Etherton Collection boasts
pricey art pieces, including photography by the Pulitzer Prize
winner Jack Dykinga and the National Geographic photographer Adriel
Heisey. Its art rotates about twice a year.

The galleries are open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through
Friday. Big receptions for openings of exhibits at the company
headquarters attract several hundred people, Forszt said.

Ventana Medical Systems first began displaying art for the
public about three years ago, less than a year after its facility
opened in Oro Valley. The towering sculpture in its parking lot is
a product of the town's requirement that one percent of all its
construction costs be spent on public art.

The company's secondary function as an art gallery has been a
boon all around, Forszt said.

"We're thrilled with it," he said. "This provides artwork that
is affordable for employees and visitors, and we have visitors that
come from all over the world. It makes for a nice environment."